Quick post. I got a resupply of steroids so I can use my computer and such briefly. So this came about all of a sudden two days ago. I dont remember what lead to it but I learned I might have astigmatism. The more i talked about it with my friends, the more it added up, until I was certain. Well, I immediately booked an appointment with my primary care doctor, who gave me an urgent referral to an optometrist. I just saw her today. Guess what? I do have astigmatism. In both eyes. I'm not nearsighted, or farsighted, and in fact I've lived my entire life up to now believing I didn't need glasses at all. But it turns out I've had astigmatism since I was born. I've always had these problems like light leaving trails, bright lights hurting my eyes and head, my eyes straining in certain conditions. I've always lived in the dark as much as possible, turning off lights, using blackout curtains, avoiding being outside unless it's early morning or night. Light has always been painful for me, not

Hi. In a lot of pain just to write this but I'd rather put this out there, it's important. Followup to my previuos two posts. I dared to hope that I would be out of my current bad situation soon. I hoped I could be helped by the spine specialist I was referred to. That my pinched arm nerves could be released and I could resume normal functioning. I was only able to write that post because I had aweek's supply of steroids keeping me going. The doctor who referred me told me it'll keep me stable until my appointment. Know what I just found out yesterday? The referral was never fucking sent. I wasted my entire week's supply of the only help I had, waiting for a bunch of inconsiderate, lazy jackasses in a cushy office to actually do their job, which they delayed for over a week. I only found out because I called insurance themselves who had never even received a referral and had no idea what I was talking about. I was furious. I immediately called my primary care office and asked that they

Hi :3 Update to my last post. I talked to my primary care doctor. I first of all had bloodwork done to test for deficiencies, and then I asked about the shoulder/arm pains. I got help with both. The test came back. I'm only deficient in Vitamin D. They started me on high dose supplements immediately. I have 6 months' supply including refills, and I take them weekly. Supposedly this will help me a ton with feeling pain and weakness in my bones and muscles. I hope so! My arm issues are caused by the herniated discs in my neck pinching my arm nerves. Sounds painful, and it is. She gave me steroids and muscle relaxants to take for the remaining week until I can get in with a spine specialist. It's been interesting recently. Yesterday I was able to code for once. The steroids and muscle relaxant seem to be helping quite a bit. And, I think my new antidepressant might be putting in work? Fingers crossed? But make no mistake. Even though some things are improving, I am still fighting every d

So just when I think I'm getting used to using both my wrists again, a few things happen. On the 26th, I randomly had a vasovagal response while calling my girlfriend and fainted on the floor painfully. The day after, I got sharp and intense stomach pains and cramps and bad head feelings until I stuffed myself full of pizza. Today, after working for several hours straight using both wrists, I suddenly had some of my original symptoms come back, ie. need to pop my wrists and sudden sharp pain when extending my arm. Why? Whats going on? So to be brief, the first two caused me no shortage of despair and fear over food stuff. I already struggle heavily with ARFID and its consequences. I've been told by many adults throughout my life that I'm starving severely, or I'm anorexic, or I'm malnutritioned. I've wondered if they were right before but this made me terrified of it. I scheduled an appointment on Monday the 3rd to get my blood tested for vitamin deficiencies. I'm hoping to replace as

Wow. It's been a while since I was able to even see my site or blog, let alone write in it. The tech issues I mentioned last time have only continued. Tech So I had ordered a few items to upgrade the server box - new SSD, new CPU cooler, PCIe ethernet card. The first one doesn't seem to show up in lsblk. The second one was incompatible with the motherboard. And the last one needed drivers which thankfully I was able to get in the end.But because I had to stay with the current CPU cooler, I had tried to take it out and put it back in, and... the end result wasn't great. One of the pegs holding it in completely broke off and refused to reattach. No matter what I did, I couldn't get it to sit right. I ended up having to ship my PC off to a repair person who thankfully lives close by.After a few days of troubleshooting back and forth, and waiting on an order, he installed a new CPU cooler, a Cooler Master, and some new thermal paste. He managed to deduce by running Linux Mint off a flash d

Hi again. In a recent post I mentioned having internet problems. It turns out that was only the beginning. While I've had spots of usable internet here and there, the internet has been largely unusable at my house for about a week. I complained previously about my mom buying new modems. I was right that those weren't the issue. But the real cause is much much worse. We had a technician come over today - the second in a week - and he was very competent and detailed in explaining our situation. It turns out the coax cables in this house are extremely old - a model called RG54 I think - which predate the nineties. They're thinner, less shielded, and more vulnerable to various kinds of damage. He explained to us that this is one of the main underlying causes of our problems, as it leads to uncontained voltage traveling up the coax cable and hitting the modem. This causes the modem to lag and freeze, even on local connections between devices on the same network, or fail device logins entire

Hi! Followup to a previous post, I had my nose surgery on January 3rd at the start of the new year (picture related). It was the full package. Not just any surgery. A revision rhinoplasty and septoplasty. In the surgeon's words, he had to take off my nose and build me a new one. It was many years in the making but now it's done. Recovery... is okay, I guess. I've had worse surgery recoveries for sure. The big painful thing for a while was my rib, which was grafted to build my new nose. I had a lot of pain when crunching or bending my torso, which, as it turns out, is part of a lot of basic movement. It's also just felt mildly weird sitting at my PC again, not just mentally but physically. Something about the way my head is oriented, especially with my new chair, makes me slightly... dizzy? I don't know. I hope it fades. I've experienced a pretty significant miracle though. Since surgery, I've been able to sleep. Like, deeply. I've always had severe sleep problems since I was little, si

Happy new year, as everyone's saying! I wasn't particularly as excited as everyone else has been, but I at least wanted to make this post to retrospect on everything that happened this year. Overall, I'd say 2024 was, despite its obvious terrible spots, a very good year for me. I figured out so many things about myself and what I want to do. I feel like I really grew into myself and started to finally grow up this year. Here's some highlights: Created my personal website Visit with my partner Started Figura commissions, and made over $1000 total from it in 2024 Got my driver's license, which required a lot of fighting against my mom and the abuse dynamic in my home, and a hard mental spiral after failing my first road test Reconnected with a childhood friend, who turned out to be a wonderful trans girl like me, and got very close over time, and visited a lot PC upgrades, various server box tweaks and services Helped a dear friend fight off an abusive influence Made Eirtube (if you know

I'm somewhat able to type again. And I really mean that. I've had carpal tunnel for the past 2 years. Since the start of November, something went horribly wrong and I started getting insane pain along both arms. It got bad enough they couldn't touch anything and I couldn't lift something light. Well, on the 10th, I met an honest to stars miracle worker doctor who fixed me in minutes. Two injections, one on each arm. That's all it took. It turns out I have a rare condition, CRPS type 2 caused by carpal tunnel. He injected specific nerves with numbing agents and steroids. Over the next 6 weeks it'll get easier and easier to use my wrists again. But in those first ~5 hours after the injection, I felt amazing. A mountain of pain lifted from my head, and with it, anger, impatience, emotional shutdown...ness. So I know this is the right path. For the time being though I'm nowhere near recovered. I'm typing this with one paw. My right one is still waaaaaay worse than my left one. I can type i

Hi again! Been a bit since my last update. As you may or may not know, dear diary, and I guess any friends who check on this site, I've been going through a tough time. This past month has been hellacious. The sound problem here at home has caused me no shortage of pain. Ever since the construction happened on my home, all sound has become so much louder. Even with my door closed I could constantly hear my brother on his loud keyboard with his door open, his terrible, creaky old chair, my mom's pianos, and any other noises like footsteps. In addition, the blackout curtains I to make the light levels in my room tolerable have made terrible scraping noises of metal on metal from the slightest change in air movement, or the A/C turning on or off. I went through battles for a few weeks, fights with my family members, with physics, with my curtains and the curtain hanger, with my doorframe, with thumbtacks... there's been a lot. I tried everything I could to mitigate the problem despite the